In the UK, over 80,000 children live in care, many of whom carry experiences of trauma, loss, and instability.
While local authorities and agencies work tirelessly to ensure children’s physical safety, emotional safeguarding is equally critical but often overlooked.
Digital life story work is emerging not just as a therapeutic tool, but as a practical safeguarding measure - helping protect children’s emotional wellbeing, identity, and right to be seen, heard, and remembered.
Safeguarding Is More Than Risk Management
Safeguarding is often framed around preventing harm - physical abuse, neglect, or exploitation. But true safeguarding extends beyond minimising risk. It includes building emotional security, fostering identity, and ensuring every child feels valued and connected to their life story.
For children who move between carers, social workers, and schools, this continuity can easily be lost. Without a secure sense of identity, children may feel invisible, disconnected, or at risk of poor emotional health later in life.
Digital Life Story Work Strengthens Emotional Safety
Digital life story platforms give children a safe space to capture memories, photos, milestones, and achievements - ensuring these pieces of their story are never lost, even if their circumstances change. This continuity strengthens emotional safety, helping children:
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Process their experiences in a healthy way
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Build self-worth and confidence
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Maintain a sense of belonging and identity
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Reduce feelings of isolation or being forgotten.
Research shows that children with strong personal narratives are better equipped to regulate emotions and cope with life’s challenges.
Protecting Against Emotional Neglect
Children in care are often at risk of emotional neglect - not through lack of care, but through systemic gaps where memories, milestones, and relationships are not consistently recorded or shared. Digital life story work closes this gap, providing a structured way for agencies, carers, and children to record:
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Who was there for them at key life moments
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What they achieved and what made them proud
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Where they’ve lived, learned, and grown
This protects a child’s right to know their own story - something that can otherwise be lost across multiple placements and transitions.
Supporting Agencies to Fulfil Their Duty of Care
Digital life story work is a practical way for agencies and local authorities to meet their duty of care obligations - not just legally, but ethically. By embedding life story work into everyday practice, organisations:
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Demonstrate a child-centred approach
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Provide evidence of emotional safeguarding in audits and inspections
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Strengthen long-term outcomes for care-experienced young people
It’s not just best practice - it’s responsible practice.
A Call to Action
We have a responsibility to ensure that no child in care reaches adulthood without the chance to understand who they are and where they’ve come from. Digital life story work is more than a nice-to-have - it’s a vital safeguarding tool that helps protect children’s emotional security for life.
The Fostering Network is proud to partner with CaringLife to bring digital life story work to children across the UK.
To find out how you can implement digital life story work in your organisation, visit www.caringlife.com or email [email protected]
